Friday, June 22, 2012

Revelation

I find myself in a dark place these days, not sweetly dark in terms of the mysticism of the Craft but an opaque and cold darkness that comes from the feeling of being pushed out of any kind of world that I recognize as sane, reasonable or even inhabitable. Like so many people, I am very angry and frustrated about what is going on in this country. In fact, you might even say that I am enraged. Take for instance the man of questionable morality whose dealings over the years are of questionable legality, and who bought his way into office and has just declared the Attorney General of the United States to be in contempt of Congress. I have asked before, and I will ask again. How can you be in contempt of a brothel? The Congress of these United States is a great whorehouse where legalized corruption, fee-for-service influence peddling, and the routine betrayal of the interests of constituents across this land are not only perpetrated but venerated. All of this is sanctified and ritualized in the name of the religion of Jesus Christ, who many Pagans, including me, view as the Bringer of Compassion.

The heart of this darkness that I find myself in is a perpetual spinning of lies and weaving together of idiotic, immoral and hate based conspiracies with an easy freedom and inexhaustible excess. These psychotic flights of fancy and mass produced, deliberate group delusions stand in the world for many people with the veracity and authority of revelation. The mainstream media’s sin of omission in not calling out this twaddle and the political gangsters who propagate it is a tacit agreement and validation which is, in and of itself, stunning. The latest episode of diarrhea like conspiracy dumping asserts that a failed ATF mission, orchestrated by the Bush Administration and stopped by the Obama Administration, is somehow an organized strategy of the president’s to undermine the 2nd Amendment and take away the weapons of gun owners. In listening to Rachel Maddow talk about this I suddenly became aware of an insight that has lurked in my unconscious like a wraith for the last twenty odd years. The identification of guns, war, vampire capitalism and exploitation of workers and the poor with the Bringer of Compassion is a hideous manipulation of a people raised on fear, retribution and punishment through the distortion of Christianity perpetrated by a greedy and avaricious organized religious patriarchy going back to the Middle Ages and before. That patriarchy has been born again in the form of a malignant and sometimes criminal political system.Thus, guns serve our God. Feeding hungry children – not so much. Praise Jesus. War serves our God. Peace in our lifetime – not so much. Praise Jesus. An unbridled and unscrupulous Free Market serves our God. Economic justice – not so much. Praise Jesus. On and on it goes and has gone for the better part of three decades. People like me, raised to another faith tradition with guiltless and nonjudgmental rules that derive from the phases of the Moon, the cycles of the Earth, the wheel of the Seasons, seeing this have ask, who is this Jesus? Is he a sociopath? His followers appear to be. So yesterday, I read the New Testament. I didn’t see anything about guns or the good of War or the Free Market. I did see a lot about empathy, charity, peace and caring for those in need. Could it be that Jesus wasn’t a conservative as the harbingers of self interest claim, but a socialist? In any case it seems that Pagans understand Jesus Christ the Bringer of Compassion better than some Christians.What then of the other Christians, the ones who know Christ? Where are they? Why aren’t they storming through the halls of power – the Temple if you will – running out the modern day traders who are sucking this country dry like a pool of leaches. Why do they tolerate these sycophants of wealth who claim to be the moral spine of this nation, who follow both the Old and the New Testament – two books that seem to be stuck together like marshmallows on solidified jell-o? In the early days of Christianity a chauvinist hegemony of church fathers in attempting to select the books that would be part of the New Testament and support their swelling power, summarily disallowed the Gnostic Scriptures and in doing so took it upon themselves to transform Mary Magdalene, first among Christ’s disciples, into a common prostitute. Accordingly, the panders and pimps of Congress have seen fit to turn the true religion of Christ into a common whore serving in the brothel that is the Government of the United States of America. When you have taken a faith, the cobblestones of a life path, and denigrated it in this way any lie, distortion, misrepresentation, manipulation or maltreatment of a person who deserves better is acceptable. I tell you this Christians, Pagans would never stand for it, and we have many fewer options in this society than you do.